"What does this have to do with videogames. More and more like Kotaku every day"

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"What does this have to do with videogames. More and more like Kotaku every day"

At least they are aware that the quality of their articles is dwindling. Though I bet that is written by John Walker after having received much criticism so as usual he take the passive aggressive stance and try to ignore the valid concerns of their readers.

There is no source, no information about the game and only related to some "gaming culture", not unlike those Kotaku writers at all. So much for proper gaming journalism eh? This is not just a one-off too as more and more articles barely related to gaming have been posted on the website. So much so that I've to check who wrote the articles before reading them and this is really unfair for them as they occasionally put a decent article or two but it has left a bad taste for me to not to ignore them.

I never read every single post, but there were always enough interesting stuff to read in a voice that I couldn't find elsewhere. This is still true. About the only change I've noticed is that the volume of posts have increased - and that I generally call a good thing, as it means RPS is being relatively successful.

I think the gaming world produce a number of stories every day (maybe 0.8 stories) and if you post more than that number, you are forced to make opinions (typical "blog posts") or mirror news other people are reporting, and that include "man byte dog" stories.

So I imagine a slider bar, with "Quality" on one side, and "Quantity" on the other, and it is configured to be in the middle, a noch to the right. I think some people would want to move the slider a notch to the left.

Personally, I want both quality and quantity. Maybe sacrifice quantity if theres a really good story to tell.

Another fact of life is that people get old and move on. I miss some posters, and writters,.. but we have to give a oportunity to new posters and new writters. The great writters have to start somewhere, and RPS could be the place.

We are not Kotaku yet, ... RPS still have to write articles about Cakes or some dude dreshing as the princess Zelda*.

I have gone from reading every single post to cherry picking like I did at 1up (pre fall) or something like giant bomb.

I have started filtering by writer unless I really like the idea of the game in question.

Same approach tbh. There's zero point reading articles by people who curdle your blood.

Why yes you're right I'm deliciously evil
Tradition is the tyranny of dead men
Steam:Kadayi Origin: Kadayi
Their early work was a little too new wave for my tastes....The Conclave beckons ... PM for details

I have to agree, it's quite a shock finding myself actively starting to avoid posts based on the writer or a combination of the topic and number of comments. It used to be that you could read anything and everything and it'd be pretty interesting. And I *do* like posts not strictly regarding a particular game, but stuff that goes on around gaming in general, but lately there's been an oberabundance of that kind of article, and they beat the same themes time and time again, making them all a bit "same-y". Then another problem is that everything is starting to get a little too politically correct and some people seem to be actively trying to egt offended by some thing or other. Or we have more american writers lately, I don't know.

I'm not trying to be offensive at all, just giving feedback as a reader. We know what you guys think as writers because we read you, this is the only way we have to let you know what we think as readers. Cheers!

I see this sentiment more frequently in the comments now, and I still really don't get it. Having been reading RPS for ages, the tone and the balance of articles seems pretty much the same to me as it ever did. I mean, the article about the in-game assassin does have a source -- Kotaku -- and the Kotaku article itself has a source, the Sanqing Daily. It's an interesting story, it's about gaming, so... what's the problem? I don't really know Kotaku, but even if some of their articles are somehow more "frivolous" or whatever I don't see what's wrong with pointing to the interesting ones.

RPS wouldn't be nearly as interesting if it was just a stream of reviews, previews, and development updates. There's a million websites for that. What sets RPS apart is the variety of stuff you see here, the random flights of fancy, the analysis, the essays, the playthroughs, opinion pieces and stories. They pick up on all the stuff that's part of the medium, the industry, the experience of being a gamer, that gets filtered out of the usual press releases and standard article formats. That's, like, what the whole New Games Journalism thing is about, innit?

But yeah, I guess I'll stop dancing around the huge elephant in the living room here. Part of that approach means picking up on stuff that has pervaded the industry for ages and that people are now actually starting to pick up on, to talk about and, if it's nasty bullshit, to point it out as nasty bullshit. Stuff like sexism, which is still rife as hell in the community and comes up pretty often in the medium itself. Other journalists and commentators are starting to talk about that, and RPS are picking up on a few of those stories. That's cool. That's their job. Despite how much it freaks people out, it still only takes up a tiny portion of the actual output of the site -- sexism, for instance, is not mentioned in more than a percent or two of the articles by my counting.

Seems like some people can't handle that and would prefer if RPS left all of those issues completely alone. I don't think RPS will, because they have integrity and stick to the same principles they always have. I quote the RPS staff:

"At RPS our knickers are almost permanently in a twist. And thatís because we operate in an industry thatís worryingly busy with pantie-bunching nonsense. Weíre also not the sort of site that likes to stay quiet about such things, and whole-heartedly believes that by making a fuss you can make a difference. Sometimes we have, sometimes we havenít, but weíve tended to have an opinion either way."

Good bloody show, lads. Carry on. I mean, if you want to skip all of that stuff you're perfectly free to do so, but moaning about it, and especially kicking and screaming and being insulting in the comments section seems a bit silly. There's always IGN, Eurogamer, PC Gamer, etc etc etc, if all you want is straight-up "games reporting" (although now that I think about it, all of those sites have written about issues such as sexism with much the same approach as RPS. Guess this is an obvious and necessary facet of attentive journalism about this industry because these are issues that actually affect people!)

I can guess who gets the hatedom, but to me that says more about their haters than them.

*chortles*

Why yes you're right I'm deliciously evil
Tradition is the tyranny of dead men
Steam:Kadayi Origin: Kadayi
Their early work was a little too new wave for my tastes....The Conclave beckons ... PM for details

Nothing wrong with that, I wish I could blanketedly approve of RPS, I no longer recommend RPS to more mainstream gaming friends who want to look deeper. Sometimes I almost feel embarrassed by the articles.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no savant writer, but I feel like my expectations of rps are being occasionally confounded on the front page. I also need to highlight that by and large the rps community are the most interesting, divergent and meritous folk as I could hope to meet online (I miss wizardry and wulf though), but some topics are needlessly incendiary and I avoid those threads.

I don't begrudge those writers their opinions but nor do I hasten to read them.

I find the story about the dad who hired gamers to gank his son repeatedly until his son stopped wasting time gaming all day to be an interesting human interest story.

Ditto.

Here's the thing - gaming has come so far in only a few short decades. We live in an interesting time where video games are still young enough to be scapegoated, still young enough to warrant constant studies into their effects, have gone from a geeky niche hobby to being bigger than the giant movie industry, and are sailing into the uncharted waters regarding both corporate and consumer rights.

So yes, I like reading articles that aren't necessarily about specific video games, but gaming, and the stories surrounding it.

"Quantacat's name is still recognised even if he watches on with detached eyes like Peter Molyneux over a cube in 3D space, staring at it with tears in his eyes, softly whispering... Someday they'll get it." - The Conclave